Wednesday, June 20, 2007

We just wrapped up the Winter 08 hardcover catalog. Tor puts together three catalogs a year which means four months of book covers need to be completed by one date each season. Of course it always gets a bit hairy towards the end and inevitably things get tweaked as the season progresses. I say “tweaked” in both less and more, sometimes much more, generous terms.

I think we are in pretty solid shape this season -- thanks, always, to my incredible staff. Seriously. These guys are amazing. Great designers that never seem to get flustered with all the changes and last minute additions. Our unsung hero, especially around catalog time, is Vanessa Paolantonio. Besides her own design work she has the thankless job of keeping the rest of us on track. (Hmmm, it may be time for a group “Yay us!” lunch.)

Now that the catalog is done the next thing that happens is the sales conference. At that point, any of the covers can still get nixed if our reps feel they just aren’t hitting the mark. Often we get away clean — by now we have been trough a number of dress rehearsals for that meeting -- but it’s not uncommon, either, for one cover to be completely scrapped at that point. We’ll see how well we do in August .

Here are a few random Winter 08 covers.

In the Court of the Crimson Kings:Sequel to The Sky People. Art by Greg Manchess. Anytime we can make sci-fi pink is a good time.Pebble in the Sky:Peter Lutjen has set up this nice series template for four Asimovs reprints we will be publishing throughout the next year.Blasphemy: This took many iterations but the final, with all it's foily goodness, looks pretty great. Thanks to Howard Grossman. (You can't see it here but the final is printed over foil, matte finish with spot gloss on the type, and embossed.)Space Vulture: Taking a page out of Hard Case Crime's play book -- pitch perfect retro art by Glen Orbik.Spider Star: First time working with Daniel Dociu. A pleasure to work with -- we’ll be seeing him many covers in the future, I'm sure.The Boundless Deep: Eerie and pretty. Thanks to Jamie Stafford-Hill.

As an Asimov collector I can't wait for "Pebble in the Sky". I am delighted that Tor is bringing this book back in hardcover.

The other 2 galactic empire novels are obvious guesses as being among the 4. It would be great if "Robots and Empire" is the other book. Hopefully Tor will eventually do all Asimov novels as hardcovers.